EPTStarcraft 2 units: a cost-effectiveness analysis. - Page 6
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Necrosjef
United Kingdom530 Posts
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Chronocide
United States126 Posts
On July 24 2010 13:35 carwashguy wrote: Observations and inferences If you disagree with any of these, please post which ones specifically and a detailed explanation of why. I will update with your insight and credit you. [*]Zealots have fantastic purchasing power when facing a ground troop. This is misleading. There's no doubt that zealots are a great bang for the buck, but only if you can utilize them. Can they surround? Does your opponent have anti-light or AOE units? I think a better conclusion to draw from this is to underscore why zealot charge is such a great upgrade. You're increasing your ability to utilize this inexpensive and powerful unit. [*]When not expecting an air threat, heavily favor Roaches to Hydralisks. Hydras have a much better range which means in ANY practical conflict they will do more damage than roaches. I think the conclusion to draw is that you might consider adding more roaches to your roach/hydra mix than you were expecting, but even that is dependent on factors well beyond the scope of this study. [*]Mutalisks appear rather costly, throughput-wise. The strength of the muta lies in it's mobility. again, not something you can calculate easily. [*]Missile Turrets, out of all the units, give you the best bang for your buck, by far. Most missle turrets never fire more than 1-2 shots in a game. [*]Marines are a safe buy, Blizzard has valued them highly. Again, comments like these are very misleading. They're a safe buy? When facing banelings, colossi, or hellions? Lets try it sometime and see how it goes [*]Unless I'm missing something, Assault Mode Vikings seem only useful when fighting air-to-air units. You're missing that they can't hit air in assault mode  and again, the strength of assault mode lies in the mobility of fighter mode.[*]When facing armored units at a closer range, get those tanks out of Seige? According to Cyanure, perhaps not since this does not take splash into account. However, seven added DPS seems like a good enough incentive to me. You're missing that it takes 3.5417 seconds to change from siege mode to tank mode. But there are indeed situations where tank mode is the better route to go, but only very early when unit counts are low (such as one tank + a handful of marines vs a few stalkers or marauders). Anyways I think this kind of theorycraft is only very vaguely useful, and I caution any new players reading this to draw completely erroneous conclusions from it. Efficiency has it's place in Starcraft, but there are so many factors involved that a study like this can't even hope to understand them all. Here are the conclusions I would draw from this (all prettymuch already established and no-brainers):
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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perfectflaw72
Canada94 Posts
On July 24 2010 13:40 Mr_LOL wrote: as someone totally new to sc2 and rts games in general, this is extremely helpful. to bad your a noob and did a shitty job User was banned for this post. this is really helpfull but you bash him? wtf is your probleme you dont complement someone then tell them to fuck off | ||
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carwashguy
United States175 Posts
On July 25 2010 04:54 Barrin wrote: @OP You begin your OP as if you understand that paper logic only goes so far. I look over the rest of the OP and I see the kinds of things you would expect from paper logic. And there's nothing wrong with that considering the disclaimer. Then I read some of your comments, and, with all due respect, you seem decidedly closed-minded. Don't get me wrong, I am probably guilty of this sometimes. However, I am a firm believer that this thread could go on for thousands of pages and there would still be stones left un-turned. For every new strategy, there are multiple ways to break it. Just like there are multiple ways to solve pretty much any math problem. I see in the OP that you are indeed considering quite a few factors. But I think there are just too many to really be able to put down. Here are a few. [...] That said, <3 On the good side, I promise you that nobody knows everything about how potential any given unit can be. So true. I agree that the post could go on for eons. That said, a good player may instinctively get a feel of what kind and how many units to make and when, either from trial and error or by imitation. I would like to know how certain units are more beneficial and when. I don't want to just take it on faith. The whole idea here is to have some sort of practical starting point for evaluating units. Then, I can fill in the blanks of why exactly a unit is more beneficial than this data would suggest. Once I've grasped that, I have a much better understanding of how the game works than just by trial/error and imitation. I can use this better understanding to make reliable decisions based on what I've verified to be true. So yes, there's mountains upon mountains of complexity, far beyond the scope of this data, but at least I have an objective start. When something smells funny about the data, it means there's an unaccounted-for benefit. Once I've sniffed out that benefit, I'm better for it. | ||
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Ryuu314
United States12679 Posts
DTs are meant to be cloaked harassers and at the beginning of the game, they really are nothing more than expensive zealots. They have an total hp value of 120 (80/40), while zealots have an hp value of 150 (50/100). However, DTs get a enormous boost to their attack per upgrade. At +1, DT attack jumps almost 10%, from 45 to 50 damage. Once the late game is reached and upgrades are full, or near full, DTs will be doing a tremendous 55-60 damage per shot. Despite having a rather low attack rate (.67 hits a second), their DPS skyrockets tremendously by the time you upgrade the +2 weapons, even just +1 weapons greatly improves their dps. Now for the resource cost. DTs are obviously an arm and a leg more expensive than a zealot. However, using the data you provided, at no upgrades, DTs already deal over twice the DPS as zealots. However, due to their lesser HP and absurdly high gas cost, they're still probably not really worth it. Again though, with upgrades, their DPS capabilities soar through the roof. At +3 upgrades, they rival the Immortal in dealing large packets of damage, except to all units, not just armored. Conclusion? Yea, you shouldn't replace zealots with DTs. That's too prohibitively expensive because of the large gas cost per DT. However, relegating DTs to obscurity once your opponent gains detection probably isn't all that smart either. Once the investment has been made into DT tech, supplementing your forces with DTs could quite possibly work very well, especially in the late game. I've thought about this for quite a while during the beta ever since I saw how much upgrades affected DTs. In the ongoing GGInvitation tourney, oGs.Cool played a game against an unknown named Andro during the ro64. During the third and final match, Andro used mass DTs to quite a good effect and pretty much won with it. Although, yes, there were a LOT of errors on both sides in terms of gameplay, it's still a pretty nice proof of concept as that game was definitely pretty high level as oGs and its members are among the very best SC2 players right now. | ||
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Jugan
United States1566 Posts
There is only a set # of gas you can gather at one time. Take Terran mech for example - they are always starved for gas. You can only have a max of (in most cases) 6 workers grabbing gas from one base at a time, whereas you can have roughly 24-32 workers gathering minerals from the same base at the same time. While gas costs are not as intense as mineral costs, they are still very heavy. | ||
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Kahmunrah_
Singapore15 Posts
On July 24 2010 13:54 youngminii wrote: Pretty dumb how strong BCs are. Looks like TLO realised the potential OP of the BCs already. which match did tlo use bcs?? | ||
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lololol
5198 Posts
On July 25 2010 02:32 carwashguy wrote: Eh, liquipedia says fm = 1 and am = 2. And I'll work on that rounding. Google's doing some weird stuff there. You got to be fucking kidding me. It's very clear here, it doesn't even use fm or am, it simply states Air and Ground -> http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Viking You can also very easily check with the editor or in game and it would be very obvious to you which one has a lower cooldown, if you have ever used vikings. | ||
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tetracycloide
295 Posts
On July 24 2010 13:35 carwashguy wrote: On the other hand, to a much lesser effect, more frequently hitting attacks will more likely inflict finishing damage before a unit dies or moves away--"final cooldown waste," if you will. This is not actually true. The DPS values listed by calculating damager per shot divided by time between shots are a minimum DPS value for any given engagement. They assume that for every shot a full cooldown is used but this is rarely the case. A unit that deals 1 damage 20 times a second would kill a unit that has 60 hit points in 2.95 seconds (the first shot having no cooldown). A unit that deals 20 damage 1 time a second would kill a unit that has 60 hit points in 2 seconds. Almost a full second before the unit that deals faster packets of damage with equal DPS. The effective DPS in this case is 20.34 for the first unit and 30 for the second. So in a real world comparison the best conclusion to draw is that high damage slow refire rate units are the best damage dealers with only short windows do deal damage in while low damage high refire rate units with high DPS are best for sustained engagements. I'm sure this comes as a suprise to no one who has ever microed marauders or roaches in small scale engagements and aimed to get the best arc they could with hydras and marines in large scale engagements. | ||
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carwashguy
United States175 Posts
On July 25 2010 07:00 lololol wrote: You got to be fucking kidding me. It's very clear here, it doesn't even use fm or am, it simply states Air and Ground -> http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Viking You can also very easily check with the editor or in game and it would be very obvious to you which one has a lower cooldown, if you have ever used vikings. Ah ha, this is the page I was referring to, which is apparently incorrect. Fixing... On July 25 2010 07:13 tetracycloide wrote: This is not actually true. The DPS values listed by calculating damager per shot divided by time between shots are a minimum DPS value for any given engagement. Oooh, will fix now. | ||
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Wendizzle22
United States11 Posts
Because they can't take in account for splash, they can't account for how some units, like marines, die even faster, making the unit worse situationally. The entire game is about situations and how to capitalize in them with spells, splash, direct DPS, etc. and therefore these numbers are not relevant to how good any specific unit is. | ||
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youngminii
Australia7514 Posts
..Watch Day9's KotB | ||
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Meff
Italy287 Posts
Zerg [*]When not expecting an air threat, favor Roaches to Hydralisks? Chronocide says, "Hydras have a much better range which means in ANY practical conflict they will do more damage than roaches. I think the conclusion to draw is that you might consider adding more roaches to your roach/hydra mix than you were expecting, but even that is dependent on factors well beyond the scope of this study." Actually, on top of what Chronocide said... first off, you need to amend it to "when not expecting air, marauders, immortals or ultralisks", but that's sort of tangential to the type of analysis that you're carrying on here. My methodology objection is that, in a roach+hydra mix, roaches withstand hits and hydras deal damage. As a result, DPS*HP is not a good measurement of the usefulness of either unit (and, in fact, this is supported by how pure roaches lose to a good composition of roach+hydra at equal cost). Hydralisks would be insanely overpowered if they morphed for 10 minerals and 5 gas each, had 8 hp each but dealt the same DPS (whereas your method "thinks" that they would be just as useful as they are now). | ||
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goneim
China201 Posts
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Keren
United States67 Posts
As the OP said himself the data isn't perfect, there is absolutely no mathematical way to describe what's "best" in any given situation - that's why its a game played by a you sitting behind a computer and not a mathematical exercise. The point isn't "look at all these ways where the data are wrong" but rather "given these calculations, what informed conclusions can I draw?" Let's take something basic -- let's say that it had never dawned on us exactly how ridiculous Battlecruiser Air to Ground DPS was or just how much damage zealot can actually do all while not costing very much. From these we should ask ourselves, are there any ways in which I can take these newly found bits of information and put them into use? Maybe we see a late game situation and go "Ah ha! I remember that BCs rape ground and if I build a few, I bet I can exploit this when I attack his latest expansion" or "you know, with charge I've been able to get a lot of zealots to the fronline but I've been bringing so few, I haven't really be able to have them do any damage, I should build more before the next engagement!" Of course the above examples are even still a bit simplified but the point remains the data in the OP are useful, you just need to sit back and think about when they'd be applicable. For instance, it never dawned on me that DTs do so much damage that even while detectable, they're not principally that awful, which now has been making me think if there would be some way to implement this in my actual games. Maybe after a few upgrades (which I don't need rigorous calculations to show me will greatly help DTs at +5/upgrade) and Zealot Charge to allow them to take the damage for the DTs, I can implement them into my late game army. But before I do, I am going to go check something for myself that the chart can't do for me, which is find out where Dark Templar lie on target priority because if they're higher than Zealots, even if Zealots go in first they'll get incinerated and thus not be useful. | ||
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Ichabod
United States1659 Posts
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Chronus
1 Post
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Grond
599 Posts
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AgentComet
United States39 Posts
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